I'm in the same boat as you. I tend to think it's a good thing the FDA denied boosters to the general population. At least to Pfizer. I'm interested to see if we'll mix-and-match, considering that Moderna doesn't suffer as drastic of a waning immunity as Pfizer does. But I think the FDA made basically the right call, except they should've made the cutoff age 60 instead of 65.
It's been intentionally made a partisan issue. The powers that be have divided us into teams. It wasn't an intentional conspiracy theory, but an emergent property of our society's current makeup.
The anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers wanted an excuse to disobey what they see as liberal orders. They want a fight. They're looking for one at every turn.
It's not looking good. In my rough estimations, I've been telling my friends to expect this to last four to six more years because yes, they'll sabotage our efforts.
As for COVID-19 mortality being on par with that of the flu, it is but it also isn't. The alpha strain was but we don't have enough data on the other strains to make that assertion, to my knowledge. And when we take a look at the aggregate death count, like Joe Duncan did, making us this handy chart here, we find that COVID-19 is markedly more deadly than Influenza & HIV ever thought of being.
It's not even close...
The idea that it's "about as deadly as the flu" is extremely misleading.
For a more detailed explanation, here's a bit about his methodology.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=547594066669697&set=a.225599272202513
